SPOILER ALERT: Brody's back! Or is he? Carrie is reunited with the man of her dreams - and nightmares. More madness in Homeland, by Jim Shelley

In Homeland, it’s safe to say things are not going well for Carrie Mathison.

Even by her standards, the hard-drinking, sex-crazed, bi-polar CIA agent who has spent years messing up missions and watching the love of her life being tortured or executed, is having arguably her most gruelling series yet.

Then, just when you thought her travails in series four couldn’t get any worse, who should turn up?

Brody. OMG, amazeballs, knock me down with a feather...

Madness: Claire Danes gave a masterclass, turning her frowning up to 11, as things went from and to worse for Carrie Mathison

He's back! Damian Lewis made a shock return, prompting fears that Homeland was going to match the absurdity of Bobby Ewing's 'It was all a dream' shower scene in Dallas

As TV bombshells go, Brody’s sudden appearance was right up there – or down there – with Bobby Ewing’s ‘it was all a dream’ shower scene.

After all, Brody had been HANGED, from a crane, right in front of Carrie’s eyes – and ours – at the end of season three.

Plus, ever since then actor Damian Lewis had (seemingly/cunningly) been confirming his departure from one of America’s favourite shows in every interview he had done (‘Why Brody Had To Die For The Show’), not to mention being permanently available to present Have I Got News For You.

Instead, Homeland mark IV has been a battle about who would fare worse – Carrie or medical student Aayan Ibrahim?

Admittedly Aayan is dead but Carrie is still giving him a good run for his money. You could argue that, by dint of being alive, she is suffering more.

On the other hand, Aayan is (or was) an innocent boy, an unwitting victim, stuck in the middle of the CIA and the Taliban. Carrie meanwhile is, well, Carrie. She loves trouble and trouble loves her. Carrie’s used to it, and when it comes down to it, mostly causes it.

Bombshell: Claire Danes and Damian Lewis were re-united in a shock reunion in Homeland

It didn’t take long before Aayan was on the receiving end of her scattergun approach to spy work, initiating a catalogue of personal disasters that started as follows:

Enjoying a wedding celebration with his family and being blown up by American missiles when series four was only a few minutes old.

Surviving the blast but discovering his mother and sister had been killed.

Finding himself in the public eye and in the sights of the CIA and the Taliban when, against his wishes, his roommate uploaded Aayan’s footage of the wedding on to YouTube.

Being expelled from university after his girlfriend’s father, wary of his newfound notoriety, reported him for stealing pharmaceuticals.

Manic: The Brokedown Palace star certainly knows how to 'do' intensity for the cameras...

'Who's Brody?': Carrie calms down, revealing the true identity of the man she has embraced in the latest twist

With a run of bad luck like that, unsurprisingly Aayan spent his first four episodes in Homeland, wandering around in a wide-eyed daze, mumbling, with actor Suraj Sharma looking as if he wished he was back in a boat with that tiger.

Little did Aayan know his problems hadn’t even started. He hadn’t met Carrie for one. Carrie could show him how suffering in Homeland was really done.

Since abandoning her baby daughter to start her dream job in the Middle East as station chief in Kabul and now Islamabad, Carrie’s exploits in series four have included:

Award-winner: Danes has received countless plaudits for her role as Carrie Matheson

Deceiving Aayan into leading the CIA to Haqqani by posing as a journalist and lying about securing him a place at medical school in London. ‘That video has made you a target,’ she stressed. ‘That drone strike that killed your family. You know who did that right?’ ‘The CIA,’ he murmured. ‘They have a kill list !’ she reiterated. And, let’s face it she should know.

Seducing Aayan, taking the teenager’s virginity, despite his occasional attacks of conscience. ‘It’s against my faith. I don’t want to sin,’ he fretted. Later, when she asked him ‘don’t you want to pray?’ Aayan whispered ‘can I touch you again?’ - to which viewers could only react one way: ew ! Afterwards, he shyly apologised: ‘I took, I didn’t give.’ ‘Well you’re new at this. I’ll show you,’ Carrie reassured him. ‘After prayers.’ Nice.

Watching surveillance footage from a drone as Haqqani – having realised Aayan was being tracked - shot his nephew, point blank, in the head.

Failing to take urgent calls from Saul to report he had spotted another killer that Carrie’s team have been targeting, Farhad Ghazi, because she was busy becoming in bed having pastries and coffee with Aayan. When Saul was abducted, any chance of a drone following the vehicle Saul was in was lost when Carrie failed to take Quinn’s call for the same reason. ‘I’m recruiting here !’ she complained when Quinn accused her of ‘f***ing a child.’ Ouch.

Seeing that Haqqani now had Saul and was going to use her mentor as bait with which to negotiate for the exchange of Taliban prisoners. The drone then lost them when Haqqani outwitted Carrie and her team with the equivalent of playing Chase The Lady using identical jeeps. Poor Saul ended up chained to a radiator, having to learn that not only was Haqqani an ingeniously devious terrorist, he was a great lover – not from personal experience (thankfully – for Saul, and for us) but being forced to watch on as Haqqani was re-united with his wife.

Arriving in Islamabad and immediately seeing fellow agent Sandy Bachman being dragged from the car she was travelling in, and kicked and beaten to death.

Having her home in Islamabad broken into by the US ambassador’s husband and her medication switched for something that has induced, or caused, her to start hallucinating.

Risking being imprisoned into a psychiatric hospital (again) by screaming abuse at a nurse and assaulting a doctor, before being arrested and put in a cell with only a dying fly for company.

Being ‘re-united’ with Brody.

Not bad going, considering we’re only in episode seven.

It always bodes badly when your heroine stares gratuitously at her reflection - especially when she is as bonkers as CIA agent, Carrie Mathison

Popping pills: Carrie frantically resorts to handful of her meds. Or what she thought were her pills

Bad day: The hard-drinking, sex-crazed, bi-polar CIA agent who has spent years messing up missions and watching the love of her life being tortured or executed suffers another meltdown was at it again

As Andrew Lockhart, the head of the CIA, said: ‘an errant strike on a wedding party, the murder of Sandy Bachman, now this (Saul being abducted). Dysfunctional does not begin to describe the magnitude of the problem here.’

And he didn’t know the half of it.

Lockhart didn’t know that Carrie was walking the streets, weaving through the markets, going out of her mind. The lack of her meds or the drugs she had been tricked into taking left her hearing heightened, her vision skewed, and her behaviour becoming increasingly frantic.

Bumping into the occasional monkey didn’t help. It didn’t help me anyway. Carrie couldn’t tell whether it was real or if she really had shot at the men she thought were following her.

Anything as sensible as, say, seeing a doctor was obviously out of the question, even when she was actually in a hospital investigating a line of inquiry on her own.

Carrie greeted seeing Brody in the only way you would expect from her.

Charming! Carrie greeted seeing Brody in the only way you would expect from her: ‘Get the f**k away from me !’

A rare shot of Carrie answering her phone. If she had done that when Quinn called her last week, Saul might not have been kidnapped

Unlucky: Carrie is a station chief in the Middle East, despite being bi-polar, a borderline alcoholic/nymphomaniac, who had an affair with a double agent who tried to assassinate the Vice President

Brody materialising didn’t make sense – to Carrie or us, but then anything is possible in Homeland.

After all, the whole premise of the series is that Carrie is not only still an agent in the CIA but a station chief in the Middle East, despite being bi-polar, a borderline alcoholic/nymphomaniac, who had an affair with a double agent who tried to assassinate the Vice President.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Are you mad at me? Do you hate me? Have you come back to punish me for what I’ve done?’ She admitted: ‘I was willing to let you die.I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he promised her. ‘No-one has died. I’m here. I’m right in front of you. You’re safe now.’

Safety, of course, was all Carrie ever wanted - like all of us.

She curled up in his arms, sobbing, like a baby, over-come at having Brody back.

The episode was called ‘Redux’ but it wasn’t the man of her dreams but her nightmares that had really returned.